Which event in 1942 launched Mahatma Gandhi’s final major mass movement against British rule?

The Quit India Movement, launched in August 1942, was Mahatma Gandhi’s final major mass movement against British rule.

The All-India Congress Committee adopted the Quit India resolution in Bombay on 8 August 1942, during the Second World War. Gandhi urged an immediate end to British rule and called on Indians to engage in disciplined mass action. The next day, British authorities arrested Gandhi and other senior Congress leaders, causing decentralized protests, strikes, demonstrations, and attacks on some government facilities across India.

The movement was suppressed through arrests, censorship, police action, and military force. Gandhi spent much of the following period detained at the Aga Khan Palace near Pune, where Kasturba Gandhi died in 1944. The campaign did not immediately end British rule, but it demonstrated the depth of opposition and helped make postwar withdrawal increasingly difficult.

Quit India is distinct from the Non-Cooperation Movement of 1920–22 and the Civil Disobedience Movement associated with the Salt March. Those campaigns occurred earlier and had different immediate demands and strategies.